March 21 – March 24, 2018Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

In This is How I saw Gaza, Palestinian artist Aissa Deebi investigates factors impacting on his relationship with his homeland. The work consists of a series of paintings that probe the distance between exile and homeland using photographs of broadcasted news as a primary visual reference. Using ink on paper and oil on canvas, the mesmerizing works project a high degree of representational verisimilitude techniques.

Deebi – from Haifa and is currently Geneva-based – presents a body
of work that centers around his exile and relationship with Gaza through popular
newscasts. The artist who has been repeatedly refused permission to visit Gaza
by the Israeli authorities, depicts explosions, destruction, ordnance, and ruins of buildings protruding from black smoke.
This is not how he saw Gaza with his eyes but how he was forced to see it
through television screens in exile – clinical and dehumanizing portrayals of repeated
military attacks on an imprisoned and subjugated civilian population.

Deebi’s work is a stark reminder of continued vulnerability of the Palestinian refugee population, seventy years after their dispossession.